Optimize Your Laptop’s Battery With BatteryCare

One of the most annoying issues I have faced lately with my laptop is that it gets overheated. The most common reason why it happens is that nowadays, laptops are equipped with fast processors and hard drives. When they work in a small space, they end up reaching a high temperature.

I found out about this issue when my laptop automatically went to sleep after getting overheated. Since then, I started looking for a handy utility that can help me manage my laptop’s temperature and find out if its overheating. If you dont manage the temperature of your laptop, you may end up with a dead hard drive from which you cannot recover any data at all. It can even cause a greater damage to your processor as well which may not be the most cheapest thing to repair.

To make things easier, I started looking for apps that can help me manage my laptop’s temperature and ended up using BatteryCare.

What is BatteryCare?

BatteryCare is a very nifty little utility that can help users manage their laptop’s battery and most importantly, monitor its temperature. Higher temperature may cause your system to malfunction and may damage your hardware. The program has some useful built-in settings that can also help users manage their laptop’s battery efficiently.

Installing BatteryCare

Installing BatteryCare is pretty simple and straightforward. Like many free softwares, BatteryCare does recommend you to install third party add-ons and toolbars or in simple words, bloatware. So make sure you read the on screen instructions carefully and uncheck any unnecessary program installation.

I installed BatteryCare on two laptops at home and it showed me a different recommendation on both, so just uncheck any option that requires you to install any additional software. Other than that, there is no virus or Trojan in the bundle. I ran a scan using Microsoft Security Essentials as well as VirusTotal and it showed no signs of infection (this is for those who are extra cautious about installing different software).

Using BatteryCare

Once installed, the application will place a small icon in your Windows taskbar. One of the most important things you should see here is the battery percentage and temperature. On the main screen of BatteryCare, it will show you complete information about your battery i-e battery status, remaining time, current battery percentage and battery discharge information. A full discharge means the number of times you have fully used your laptop’s battery. It’s always a good idea to use your laptop’s full battery at least 3-4 times a month or more if possible. The most important feature is that it displays the temperature of your CPU as well as your hard drive on the main screen. To be on the safe side, make sure that the temperature does not cross 50 degrees.

Clicking on Detailed Information tab will show you in depth details of your laptop’s battery such as the company name, total capacity, current capacity, charge/discharge rate and much more.

Let’s take a look at some configuration options of BatteryCare. It offers users with useful optimization options in order to improve your laptop’s battery. From the General tab, make sure that it runs on Windows startup. On the same tab, it will show you some optimization options such as disabling aero effect and themes when your laptop is not connected to a power source as well as other windows services which consume high amount of energy when you are running your laptop on battery. You can also select which method should be used to calculate the remaining battery time.

You can also setup battery notifications as well. If you want, you can enable low/critical battery notifications for your laptop as well.

One useful feature is that you can automatically let BatteryCare select the power plan for your computer based on the current energy source. It will help users automatically manage their battery efficiently. You can also select which power plan should be used when there is no connected power source and vice versa.

Sometimes, it may not display the temperatures of your laptop. The reason behind this is that BatteryCare needs privileges to read CPU temperature. In Windows, UAC may block access to BatteryCare to read the information so you can either disable UAC (which I never recommend) or use can use the software’s bypass tool that will add the software to the exceptions list. Just go to Advanced tab and check the “Run at startup in Administrator Mode”. If it still does not show you the temperature, it may be because your hardware is not compatible with the application.

Conclusion

BatteryCare is a very handy utility when it comes to optimizing your laptop’s battery and hardware temperature. As far as the installation of bloatware is concerned, just make sure you read the on screen installation instructions carefully. All free software recommends users to install other applications and toolbars but that doesn’t mean that the software is not good.

It may not show you 100 percent accurate results but it still gives you a pretty good idea about the temperatures and laptop’s battery information.

Which application do you use to monitor your laptop’s battery and temperature? Feel free to share your views in the comments below.